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No!!! That is very definately NOT the original version of The Cascades. It is very butchered and a prime example of non- artistic liberties as opposed to artistic licence. Cascades is one of Joplins more interesting rags and deserves much better treatment that it recieves at the hands of this Phillistine. Search around a bit more, you will find something better.

Minute WaltzNocturne Op 9 No 2Grande Valse Brilliante!!! (This will take a long long time)

- Lots of rags to learn frown"

Just curious, why are you working on so many at the same time? I find Joplin to be challenging, but fun too!

One at a time, not all together. My full list of pieces to learn is around 2-3 times larger then my signature, many of which cannot be found on score so I need to work on being able to play by ear. I have currently taken a break from learning to work on developing my little fingers somemore - I were previously using them as completely flat at the joints and they never had the power to play any notes when bent at the joints, but now they can play curved as well and need more improvement, particularly with playing quick notes between fingers 3, 4 and 5. I am just grinding Hanon / maple leaf and the first 3 parts of magnetic Rag over and over again but with my little fingers curved this time - they are still slow unless I play with them completety flat, but have made great improvement in the last few days.

Playing Joplin with the 5th fingers flat has caused me a few bouts of tendonitis because movement between fingers 4 + 5 is too strained and unrelaxed, but while I have been playing with a curved finger 5, there is no more strain on the wrist or the nerves, that strain is now relieved by being gradually placed onto finger 5 instead and my wrists no longer get sore from playing, any minor strain caused to the little finger recovers in just a few hours and then I can practice it a little more and more each time and slowly build it up .

Originally Posted By: David Staff

No!!! That is very definately NOT the original version of The Cascades. It is very butchered and a prime example of non- artistic liberties as opposed to artistic licence. Cascades is one of Joplins more interesting rags and deserves much better treatment that it recieves at the hands of this Phillistine. Search around a bit more, you will find something better.

100% in disagreement with you. Musical artistry is NOT playing everything as it is written, but by improvising, playing your own way and even through composition. You are not a talented artist if you just sit down and play everything as it is written - this would be the same thing as calling a person who draws by doing dot to dots a talented artists.

I am still not good enough to improvise or play pieces as difficult as these by ear, I just like these two variations on them and wanted to be able to aquire them in score.

Maybe the original cascades is a good piece, but there are no good performances of it on youtube, most are just sloppy with careless emotion and absolutely no feeling put into the sound of the whole piece.

I have listened to many of Joplins pieces recorded from Piano roll over and over again, and believe me that many people like yourself who also complain about the speed and dynamics of the music are getting it completely wrong yourselves in the first place.

I have found Piano roll recordings of the Reflection Rag and Chrysaneseum (might be spelt wrong), but again there are no performances I have yet seen of either piece played correctly with the correct dynamics, tempo, or feeling that Ragtime is intended to provide.

The best thing I can do is to send a PM to either Chocotiger or Brasillian Musician on youtube and ask them to record the pieces for me, but of course I cant make other people play what I want to hear.

I want to try and find a recording of every Joplin piece directly from Piano roll if possible, but there isnt one for every piece on youtube, and I dont know if there are any such CDs.

Also, I tried to learn a bit of the Pineapple Rag a week or so ago and managed to read and play through the whole of the RH first section in around 10-15 minutes . I cant read the bass clef for the LH anywhere near that well yet, so still need to improve LH reading, but working through the Joplin pieces along with giving myself note reading memory tests is vastly improving my score reading ability. Its still not good enough to read and play yet, but should be by the end of this year, after which I will go to join the leeds University music groups.

I havnt played in a band or orchestra since graduating in 2007, and even then I was stuck on percussion because I werent good enough at sight reading .

Bill has won several ragtime and old-time piano contests and is well-known and respected on the ragtime circuit. This might not be *your* favorite Cascades, but, at least to me, the one you posted was almost not recognizable (and Bill was a Disneyworld ragtime player in his youth, too).

I'll see if I can find some other recordings, not necessarily on youtube, by good ragtime players.

Cathy

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CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

Bill's and Sue's sites are good places to hear some fine ragtime. If you google cdbaby/ragtime you'll find at least snippets of lots and lots of good rags - and since you read sheet music to get the notes the snippets will give you a good idea of some great styles.

Have fun -

Cathy

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CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

Yes, Joplins music sounds amazing when played correctly and 'as written', but what people dont realise is that their opinion of what they should sound like 'as written' vary very significantly to the original versions from Piano rolls! People nowadays play Joplin pieces a lot more slower and with hardly the same feel that Joplin intended, and in most cases they are not even played correctly even though you may think they are being played as written.

For me, Chocotiger is the king of playing Joplin as it should sound. I dont go by how many awards a Pianist has earned or what other people think, my only judgement comes from what my ears hear, and I know that very few people can actually play Joplin correctly.

It is like if I were to upload performances right now, I know myself that they are incorrect due not to my timing or dynamics, but rather due to my current fingering and physical technique. The Piano also plays a huge involvement in getting the sound right, and I have actually tuned my digital Piano by ear down by -1 semitone and at -70 on the tuning scale (0 = default pitch) to give my Piano a much more authentic sound for Ragtime and it now sounds how I hear the pieces are played in my favorite recordings.

I should just remove my signature because I pretty much want to learn the whole Scott Joplin book :p.

There's a lot there, but if you persist you'll find some real experts in what's out there, how it was recorded, how it was timed to play, and on and on.

Good ragtime players don't play a piece "as written" necessarily, and you'll find they all play variations and creative additions. But there really is a difference between doing that and simply taking the melody and making a different piece in a different style of it I wouldn't dismiss folks who've won the Peoria Old-time Piano contest, or the Sedalia Joplin Festival contests, very quickly.

Cathy

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CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

The 1981 edition of "Scott Joplin Collected Piano Works," originally published by New York Public Library/Belwin and now published by Alfred, $24.95, has the missing pieces you named, as well as some (like "Searchlight," Fig Leaf," and "Rose Leaf" Rags) that weren't available in the original edition. The Appendices list not only the discography, but the rollography, which is a new word for me.

It is a decent edition, worth shucking out the twenty-five smackers for.

Joshua Rifkin's recording of "Scott Joplin Piano Rags," published by Nonesuch has both "The Cascades" and "Fig Leaf," well played (in my opinion) as well as "Pineapple," which he tends to rattle through pretty fast. The recording is nicely-done technically, whether you're on-board with the interpretation or not. But, no doubt, you know a lot more about the recordings that are out there than I do.

Watch out for that RSI--- it can put you out of the piano-playing business for good. You might want to see a sports medicine doc or a physical therapist about it, or study with a teacher who knows about how to prevent keyboard injuries. It sounds like playing means a lot to you; it would be a great shame for an injury to take you down. It's unfortunately very common among keyboardists.

I love Joplin's music--- I cut my teeth learning to play on his work. Wore out my old edition, that's how I found about the changes to the newer one.

BhavVery sweeping statement you made there. Are you saying that the countless pianists who have performed Beethoven, Chopin, etc, etc maintaining strict adherence to the score are NOT talented artists. Believe me, and I have over 50 years of playing behind me, it requires much more talent to interpret a score correctly than it does to bugger it about to the degree that that ham did with Cascades. Why did Mozart take care to write all his notes out if it was never his intention for them all to be played, and, in the order written. Yes, different executants will have different ideas as to phrasing, dynamics etc, but start improvising on say, a Chopin Nocturne and all at once it ISN'T a Chopin Nocturne. A previous contributor referred to Bill Edwards performances of Joplin Rags, and these are indeed to be commended. No, Mr Edwards does not play them exactly as written, but nor does he stray too far away from the score, limiting his "personal" touches to adding the octave or a tenth to the bass notes here and there. Neither the melody or the underlying harmonies are changed, the only result being a noticably richer sound; no harm there.By all means play what you like, how you like but please don't criticise those of us who know we can't do better than the composers original and if we could, would not wish to.

Why did Mozart take care to write all his notes out if it was never his intention for them all to be played, and, in the order written.

Actually, he didn't, and he and his contemporaries improvised a lot.

Originally Posted By: David Staff

A previous contributor referred to Bill Edwards performances of Joplin Rags, and these are indeed to be commended. No, Mr Edwards does not play them exactly as written, but nor does he stray too far away from the score, limiting his "personal" touches to adding the octave or a tenth to the bass notes here and there.

If his midi of The Cascades is anything to go by, Edwards also throws in eight bars completely of his own devising in the middle, constantly varies the rhythm, uses numerous undocumented grace notes etc. etc. Clearly, this is way over the line in terms of both classical purity and common decency. In the strictest sense, then, he's as much of a ham as Miller. Leaving aside any issue of possible offense to some of the audience, what I see as the real problem with Miller's version in that video is that it's sloppy and doesn't appear to have been completely thought out, not that it's fundamentally ill-conceived.

Obviously, if Miller was hired to perform Brahms in Carnegie Hall, I would expect something far more conventional. However, he happens to be playing on an old-timey set in Disneyland, so I can't see anything intrinsically wrong with what he's attempting to do, especially since ragtime and jazz are so closely linked. Personally, I play this piece without taking even as many liberties as Edwards, but at Disneyland, I suspect a high-energy jazzed-up performance, if really worked out properly, would be far more likely to inspire those kids hanging around than would a more straight-laced version of the sacred text.

I think part of what bothered me about the Disney World recording was that it didn't make me want to tap my feet In fact, for me, with good ragtime I don't have a choice - my feet tap. In the DW video even the player lost the beat sometimes - I think he wasn't always very assured in his improvisations - maybe a matter of youth .

Of the Cascades I linked to the one that was foot-tapping for me was Paul Asaro's. Here's a short snippet from Butch Thompson that does the same (there's two little buttons in the upper left that let you choose your media player):

At least for me, that's part of the essence of ragtime - its roots in dance music. In Paul's and Butch's renditions there are accents along with the syncopation, and that steady beat that *I* don't find in the OP at any rate.

Bill Edwards does add ornaments, change phrases, etc. One of his favorite things to do, and others do also, is to "quote" some other tune in the middle of his rag - I borrowed that trick on one of my recordings of Black and White Rag (EDIT: I lied - I did it in Stones' Rag, not B&W) - I played a little Yankee Doodle before the big ending. *I* thought I was clever

A lot of ragtime isn't as rowdy nowadays as some of us might think of it. But there's a version of Tiger Rag on one of the later pages of the rtpress site that's as rowdy as you'd want, and there's always Jelly Roll Morton from the tail end of the ragtime era - there's several videos on youtube.

Cathy

Edited by jotur (05/24/0903:38 AM)

_________________________
CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

BhavVery sweeping statement you made there. Are you saying that the countless pianists who have performed Beethoven, Chopin, etc, etc maintaining strict adherence to the score are NOT talented artists. Believe me, and I have over 50 years of playing behind me, it requires much more talent to interpret a score correctly than it does to bugger it about to the degree that that ham did with Cascades. Why did Mozart take care to write all his notes out if it was never his intention for them all to be played, and, in the order written. Yes, different executants will have different ideas as to phrasing, dynamics etc, but start improvising on say, a Chopin Nocturne and all at once it ISN'T a Chopin Nocturne. A previous contributor referred to Bill Edwards performances of Joplin Rags, and these are indeed to be commended. No, Mr Edwards does not play them exactly as written, but nor does he stray too far away from the score, limiting his "personal" touches to adding the octave or a tenth to the bass notes here and there. Neither the melody or the underlying harmonies are changed, the only result being a noticably richer sound; no harm there.By all means play what you like, how you like but please don't criticise those of us who know we can't do better than the composers original and if we could, would not wish to.

This is the non classical section for music like Jazz and Ragtime, where real musical artistry is determined by being able to write and / or improvise, not just by playing the same written music again and again. You can be a talented performer by all means, but this does not mean you are a talented artist.

You can play music as it is written very well and with talent, but maybe 90% of the people who do try to will be very bad at it, only because they cant play it as well as the remaining 10%. This is the limitation you place yourself in as a performer, and trust me, most recorded performances that I watch from others make me think right away that if I was playing like that, no way in hell would I want it to be recorded or shared with anyone else.

But ultimately, all the usuall poor performances on youtube do serve a good purpose - they let me see exactly how I shouldnt be playing the music and help me to work on improving myself. I myself can play and learn the music for enjoyment as a hobby, but I will not perform untill I know that I can do it right and as well as I expect it to be from others.

I dont expect to try and 'show off' with a lame performance as many many people seem to enjoy doing.

But most of the critics of Joplin performances fall flat on their face with ignorance because they cannot tolerate the music being played in the slightest way different to the original score. This is not classical music, it is Ragtime, where just like with Jazz music, variation, improvisation and emotional expression are better artistic qualities then just playing everything as it is written.